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and computer. We had no funding, our profits came entirely from the shows we set up.” Although she had become a professional stage manager, at the age of 25 she decided to go back to college to study art and photography. She was accepted on a course at Central St. Martins School of Art, where she worked hard for three years and discovered she had a gift for computers and graphics culminating in a First Class Degree. So her second career started in the booming new technology world, where she worked as an animator, illustrator and web designer. In the course of the years she passed from a multinational digital agency to advertising and finally to creative director of an online bank, where she was managing a team of 22 creatives. She loved her job and the salary was excellent, but she was not satisfied: “I was working 16 hours a day, and I felt that the managerial side
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was taking over the creative one. On top of that, ethical and moral issues were becoming more and more important to me, and I was starting to ask myself who I was and what I was doing.” So she left, and went to Spain to learn the language and ride horses. “I wanted to clear the decks. After that experience, I understood that I needed to do something creative and physical, to be out in the open air with horses and produce objects that would outlive me. Like the things my grandfather, a master carpenter, made for us in the course of his life.” Mia Sabel wanted to learn a trade and craft that had tradition, history and a cultural heritage, and she chose saddlery. She enrolled at Capel Manor College, which provides the only full-time, two-year course in the country. “Only twelve students are taken every year. Under the tuition of a Master Saddler, we learned the very traditional methods of English saddlery, that includes saddles, bridles and harnesses, as well as the anatomy and physiology of horses. The exams are very skills-based, testing core competencies and accuracy in a given amount of time. Once you have qualified, which counts as an apprenticeship, it takes at least another three years of working in the trade to qualify for an application as Master Saddler. It used to be a very masculine trade, but in the classroom women are definitely outnumbering men.” The making of a saddle involves many different skills, and everything starts from the horse. “The upholstery of the saddle, the wooden body called the tree, depends on the size and type of the horse and on the use for which a particular saddle is intended: dressage, racing, jumping, polo and so on. The saddler works on the saddle to fit it to the horse and to suit the customer’s requirements. A very laborious, physical work. The leather
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